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Laser Jet Preps for Saturday Tuesday Missile Shootdown (Updated)

Some time between midnight and 4 a.m. Saturday, a modified 747 flying off of the California coast will aim its laser weapon at a missile more than a hundred miles away. The order will be given for the plane to fire a beam of high-powered coherent light. The laser will start burning a hole in the skin of the short-range, liquid-fueled missile as it rises into the sky. Fifty seconds later, the missile will fall into the Pacific Ocean.

Last February, the tricked-out jumbo jet successfully zapped a missile in mid-flight for the first time (see the video above). But that was from a mere 50 or so miles away. “We learned so much from that first test that our conclusion was we can operate at twice the range we thought,” the MDA chief Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly recently told reporters. That convinced the Pentagon to add an extra $40 million to the Airborne Laser’s budget for more trials.